


Alone

by kittensalad



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Eyes, Graphic Description, Light Angst, Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, Pre mag160, References to Depression, Scopophobia, please someone feed Jon, scopophobia tw but why would you even read this if you're scared of eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23078179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittensalad/pseuds/kittensalad
Summary: Martin is Lonely. He will always be Lonely. But that doesn't mean that he's alone.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 5
Kudos: 97





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a few months ago at 1 am in one of my 'hnnnnng I ♥️ eyes' moods and forgot to post it so uh have fun

Martin is Lonely. He'll always be Lonely. It's not exactly something that will just go away. It's there, seated in its polished little throne inside his heart, a seed, burrowing into him forever, always downwards and inwards. Loneliness. The Lonely.

It's a scar, perhaps not a gaping wound anymore, but the aftermath of its festering and seeping and creeping, clotting against his skin will not go away. The emptiness he feels every other second a horrible reminder of it all.

Jon helps. Knowing that Jon is here, Jon is okay, helps. Every sound he makes, rustling in drawers, every low curse and sigh, even hearing his breath helps. Martin may be Lonely, but he is not _alone._

Jon is a salve. A bandage. A temporary calm.

But he is just that. Temporary. 

Martin still feels the Lonely crawling inside him, feels the incessant burrowing, the craving emptiness that fills his insides, hungering to get away, to run, to isolate himself. He feels it when Jon goes into town to shop. The empty house begins to reek of loneliness, it seeps through the cracks in the floorboards, the chimney, the gaps under the doors like a bad smell. Like something crawled inside and died. Something Lonely.

He feels it on the rare occasion that Jon sleeps. Because Jon is not here when he sleeps, he's elsewhere, haunting. Staring with all his eyes at someone else, someone far away. Someone who is not Martin. Probably that one girl who complained, he thinks, or a statement-giver from somewhere, or the old clerk at the post office who'd stumbled and given Jon her life story. 

He feels it in his own dreams. His head is empty. A barren waste, devoid of life, alien. Nothing but a creeping monochrome mist and the sound of pounding seawater and rain. He disappears sometimes, when he sleeps, dreaming and dark, his shape obscures and fades from reality and Jon is forced to wake him up in one of his classic panics, worried he'll be gone forever this time. 

Martin will slowly bloom back to life though, like frost gathering on a cold windowsill, his image will spread back into sight. 

Jon is still sleeping on the bedroom floor, in a tumble of couch cushions and sheets and one thin mink blanket that must be far too drafty to stave off the Scottish cold. Not that Jon ever really sleeps. He mostly sits and thinks, chews his nails, his eyes faintly aglow in the evening dark. 

Martin has offered him the bed. He's tried to drag him into it when he can feel him shaking from the cold, but Jon and contact have never been the best of friends and he tends to freak out at more than casual touch. 

Tonight is a particularly bad night for both Jon and Martin. Martin has lost himself up to the elbows twice already and can hear the distant sound of the ocean ringing in his ears, beckoning. He tries to ward off his tiredness, doesn't want to go back to being alone. Meanwhile, Jon is shivering and his eyes are so aglow they're basically neon green nightlights implanted into his face. Occasionally his breathing will hitch, or he'll mutter something just out of ear's reach, or exclaim loudly after slipping and letting his eyes drift shut. 

"Are you okay?" he asks, voice just above a whisper. 

"I'm just hungry, Martin."

Martin goes to comment that he should cook himself something, but remembers that it's not that kind of hungry to which Jon is referring and promptly shuts up. 

He thinks for a moment.

"Use me. Use my... trauma."

He almost hears the sound of Jon's brow furrowing. "No, Martin! No. That would... You don't... I don't... You don't know what that would do, Martin. I... I don't want to, to become another nightmare. I've made it this far, haven't I? I'll be okay, Martin, just... just go back to sleep. Please. Ignore me. _Please_."

Martin knows what he means. He heard that woman speak about Jon. Heard the way he haunted her, like a ghost, stalked her dreams, melded his way into her horror like an ink blotch. The way he planted his eyes into her brain and sucked out her deepest, darkest fears, brought them back to the surface so he could frolick and feed. Made her relive everything, every night, while he stood by and just... watched, with all his inhuman eyes, pupils dilated and fixated on her suffering, a twisted voyeur. 

He understood why Jon wouldn't want to do that again, and to Martin of all people. He'd caused the poor boy enough pain, hadn't he?

"I don't mind, Jon."

"Martin, I--"

"Do it, Jon. Ask me. Ask me your question."

"No, I can't--"

"Behold me, Jonathan Sims."

And Jon does. Those four words ease their way from Jon's tightly pursed lips as though they were their own being, snaking out of his brain and into his voice box and soon slithering into the air around, a heavy weight to them, like a stormcloud had settled. _Tell me your story._

So Martin does. Tells him everything. Feels Jon worm his way between the crevices in his brain, come to rest there in the most hidden away nooks in the amygdala. Martin feels every single one of Jon's innumerable starving eyes upon him, boring holes through his very being. 

Martin is never alone now. He's always being seen, being watched, being Beheld by Jon. When he closes his eyes, Jon is there, barely visible in the darkness, a writhing undescribable shape of irises and scleras and straining veins, no eyelids to allow him the mercy of blinking, for fear of missing something, fear of not Knowing. 

When Martin sleeps, Jon is there, both by his side and inside his head. That greyscale shore may be barren, but now it is not empty. Jon is there, in the gaps in the mist, between the raindrops, hiding in the darkness underneath the waves, writhing. He is in every grain of sand, every drop of water, every cloud that graces the far off horizon. Jon is everywhere there, like he is inside the air itself, like Martin breathes him in, can feel him underneath his feet, against his skin. Watching. Always watching.

Jon looks at him with all his eyes.

Martin is Lonely. He will always be Lonely. But the Lonely...

... isn't so lonely anymore.


End file.
